Honore de Balzac Quotes
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Prostitution and robbery are two living protests, respectively female and male, made by the natural state against the social state.
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The Police and the Society of Jesus posses in common the virtue of never forsaking their enemies as friends.
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Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
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The response man has the greatest difficulty in tolerating is pity, especially when he warrants it. Hatred is a tonic, it makes one live, it inspires vengeance, but pity kills, it makes our weakness weaker.
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Woman is closer to angels than man because she knows how to mingle an infinite tenderness with the most absolute compassion.
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If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.
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Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.
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If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.
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What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
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A rent in your clothes is a mishap, a stain on them is a vice.
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A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.
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This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensuing to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of with start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.
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It's not enough to be a good person. You also have to show it.
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One hour of love has a whole life in it.
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When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses.
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All happiness depends on courage and work.
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Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.
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White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.
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In all lands, sailors form a race apart. They profess a congenital contempt for landlubbers. As for the tradesman, he understands nothing of sailors nor cares a fig about them. He is content to rob them if he can.
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Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
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The secret of the nobility and beauty of great ladies lies in the art with which they can shed their veils. In such situations, they become like ancient statues. If they kept the merest scarf on, they would be lewd. Your bourgeois woman will always try to cover her nakedness.
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Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man.
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It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.
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A society of atheists would immediately invent a religion.